Residency Requirements
Residency requirements are one of the most frequently imposed restrictions on the initiative process. These laws require that someone circulating a petition for an initiative, referendum, or recall effort be a resident of the state, county, or locality that the petition is aimed at. Supporters of such requirements claim that they are needed to reduce fraud and insure that circulators can be found if signatures are challenged.
Residency requirements are almost impossible to enforce while a petition is being circulated. As a result, voters are often disenfranchised when their signature on a petition is thrown out by election officials because a circulator did not meet the residency requirement. This is compounded when qualifications for residency are unclear or are arbitrarily enforced by officials. Critics of residency requirements claim they also prevent petition proponents from using professional signature collectors, which are often necessary to collect the number of signatures needed in the amount of time allowed.
Residency requirements in three states—Ohio, Arizona, and Oklahoma—were struck down by federal courts in 2008 for violating the First Amendment. In all three cases the courts determined that residency requirements necessarily reduce free speech by reducing the number of people who are able to carry a political message; i.e. a petition. The courts have also noted that non-resident circulators are no more likely to commit fraud than resident circulators.
On March 9, 2009 the US Supreme court denied the state of Arizona’s appeal in the residency case Nader v. Brewer, confirming the lower court striking down the state’s residency law. Other major residency cases are Nader v. Blackwell, Yes on Term Limits v. Savage and Boegart v. Land.